Blossoms & Pearls: Advertising During the Summer Slump
In her column, Sarah Pally debunks some well-loved marketing myths. This time, she tackles the myth of the “summer slump” and explains why the supposedly absent target audience is often particularly easy to reach during the holidays.
The Eleventh Commandment
In the summer, nobody wants to communicate because «the target audience» seems to vanish off the face of the earth during this time. So the market is swarming with all sorts of interchangeable splashy summer promotions—barely distinguishable from one another and blending seamlessly into the back-to-school aesthetic. And then that’s it for another year. Summer in Switzerland may be short, but even that feels like it lasts forever.
Where are all the shoppers, anyway? A good number of them might actually take a two-week vacation sometime between mid-June and the end of August. But surely not all at once. And besides, you’re not completely cut off from the world.
Cappuccino in Bibione
Just because political life, government offices, and cultural events used to come to a temporary standstill in the summer—and there was therefore less news—everyone today acts as if it were a law of nature that you shouldn’t communicate during the summer. The eleventh commandment, so to speak, is: Thou shalt not advertise during summer vacation! And there are plenty of fanatical adherents.
The summer slump has become a dogma. Perhaps partly out of self-interest. After all, no one wants to have to work at full speed all year round; surely it’s okay to slow down a bit every now and then, and so on. And it makes you sound especially smart when you say in a meeting, «But this absolutely has to be out BEFORE summer vacation, before EVERYONE IS GONE!!!!?!»
A little spoiler that might ruin the fun: The same people who are supposedly unavailable throughout July and August actually spend six hours a day on Instagram during that time—instead of three—and, out of sheer boredom, discuss just how expensive that afternoon cappuccino in Bibione has become. Digital detox is so yesterday. And you should take advantage of that, because there’s less competition, which usually means lower costs, and you tend to reach people who haven’t been bombarded with ads. Win-win-win!
By the way: The next column will be published in August. After all, it’s okay to take a break once in a while.
